Friday, October 24, 2008

I owe like ten comment replies or something (sorry) and I still haven't gotten much reading done due to playing with my dog all day (trying to keep her from digging holes and getting muddy and hoping to get her hungry enough to actually eat dog food)....so there are no reviews yet, sadly.

I'm hoping to buy some new dog toys this weekend to keep her more entertained, though :)

and to keep this all book related: I got a B&N gift card for my birthday, so how about some paperback book recs? (I get hardcovers from Amazon)YA, SciFi, Paranormal Romance, Urban Fantasy, or regular lit is all good...

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

I might not post reviews or anything for a while...My doggy baby died and I'm just going to hang out with my puppy (who's not really eating yet).

So here's to my baby girl who lived in my house for exactly 12 1/2 years (April 6, 1996-October 6, 2008 +2 days at the vet)

It's an old picture, but one of my favorites because you can see how much my puppy girl loves her and how sweet she is...even if she is stealing the ball for herself (which she kept up for the next two years, thankyouverymuch.)

Friday, October 3, 2008

one other fun October long series of contests to tell you about since I don't have a enough books to make a whole October post about just yet...

Brooke Taylor has "Monster Month of Giveaways" to celebrate Halloween because she actually loves it more than I do. My birthday is 10 days before Halloween so there was always Halloween stuff going on or I had a Halloween themed party...and then a few years in a row I worked on a production that had its performances the week before Halloween so like the day more than most...but Brooke Taylor seems to LOVE it which is good for you because it equals books and other prizes...

October 2-9th (Vampires) is up now & it's 2 prize packs with different House of Night books and other fun stuff

Oh, and my blog has that 'followers' thing now.... *is subtle but not*

(It's not Buffy related at all--that I know of--but Buffy is vampire related, I miss Buffy and Buffy has the best vampires really...yes, Buffy kicks the you know what out of Twilight and not because it's TV and Twilight's a book because Twilight will be a movie and Buffy has books...and not even because I have a freakishly strong suspicion that I won't go into that Buffy would so kick Bella's butt even if she weren't all super-powery...yeah, I'll shut up now because I do actually like Twilight but it's not sounding like it ;))

Thursday, October 2, 2008

Eleven years ago, an accident killed seventeen-year-old Kara Martinez's father. An accident that caused her to die for eleven minutes and changed her life for ever. Her mother has halted anything that has to do with their father--no more religious idols, no more Mexican food and a happy, compliant acting Kara dressed in pink clothes her mother lays out on her pillow.

Only that's not the real Kara. The real Kara wears black and does her own set of laundry in secret and hates pink. And keeps a secret blog: The Sign-Seer because that accident eleven years ago did one other thing, it gave Kara the ability to see the future in a way. She sees little flashes of a persons fate and it's up to her to piece together the puzzle in time to save them.

The story follows Kara's journey to solve one main puzzle: what it means when she sees a gun flash on a classmate's chest. Of course, life continues to go on around her complicating thing to the nth. There's her mother who wants everything to be picture, suburban perfect forcing Kara to watch her every move; her older brother who is hardly ever home. Then there's her new boyfriend Anthony...who just might be perfect except that her brother's convinced he's a gangbanger so she's not allowed to see him.

Invisible Touch had great amounts of detail thrown in (from what Kara's best friend Danielle was wearing to the routine her mother had every day) but not the kind that it ever became tedious. The characters all had their own little side stories (and were their own people) but it was never slapping you in the face or overpowering/distracting, just complimentary.

There were a lot of issues addressed or at least raised in this book (from Anthony being from the 'wrong side of town' and both he and Kara getting trouble for it to dealing with grief) but not in a PSA way.

I also loved the way this book ended. After just reading a book that was billed so heavily as a mystery and, in the end, just told me what happened, I really enjoyed the way this book pulled everything together. In the same way that Kara figures things out because she pieces things together, things from all over the story were put together to solve the puzzle/end the book. And there was another thing explained as well that made perfect sense, too. This was an example of a book that makes you think back on other parts of the book and say Oh, so that's why that happened that way!

Sixteen-year-old Scarlett Wakefield is starting fresh at Wakefield Hall...in more ways than one. Here, at Wakefield, unlike at her previous school St. Tabby's, no one knows her dark secret. A couple of months ago, Scarlett was invited to a party at one of the It girls homes. She'd only ever dreamed of going to their parties, but now that she's gone, the party lives in her nightmares.

After hours of finding the perfect outfit to buy, getting her makeup and hair just right, Scarlett was finally ready to enjoy the party--and she did. For a little while.

Besides dreaming of what it would be like to attend parties like the one she was at, she had also dreamt of what it would be like to kiss Dan McAndrew...as they stood on the terrace together, it seemed her dream was about to come true. What Scarlett never could have imagine, though, was that once she kissed Dan, he would die. Just drop dead in her arms.

And so begins the murder mystery of Kiss Me, Kill Me that's not so much a murder mystery. The book is a good book to read and follows the premise that no one knows what killed Dan but everyone blames Scarlett so she moves to Wakefield Hall to escape the scrutiny only to have someone there begin leaving her anonymous notes.

I really liked that Scarlett was involved in gymnastics--and not just in the 'jump in the air and flip around' sense but she really was and it was woven into the story--and, as I said, I did enjoy this book, but it ended very abruptly.

There is a sequel coming out in January so I'm not sure if the plan is to flesh everything out then but I felt kind of cheated because it set everything up to possibly be this great, Here's-What-Happened...and then it was maybe ten pages (or less) of ending the story by seemingly just saying This is What Happened. It didn't pull things in that had happened in the start (or one or two tiny ones), but nothing that a good mystery does where you can say, oh wait! that means...okay, now I get why that was there!

The sequel (Kisses and Lies) isn't out yet so I can't say this for certain, but maybe reading them together wil be more satisfying?

I still give it an 8/10 because disappointing ending aside, it was enjoyable and I hold high hopes for the sequel to fix some things...

Samantha Madison, artistic rebel, is a high school sophomore living in Washington DC with her super brainy (but socially challenged) younger sister Rebecca, super popular older sister Lucy, and their parents. Rebecca is the smart one who knows tons of random facts but is awkward with the day to day bits of life, Lucy is the cheerleader with the perfect red hair that is the color Sam wishes hers were and Sam is the one who has dyed all of her clothes black (in protest), has frizzy, red hair of a horrible hue, and is in love with Lucy's rebellious boyfriend Jack.

Oh, and she kind-of-accidentally saved the Presidents life.

The President's son is brought into the book then and there's much make-Jack-jealousness and Sam is made teen ambassador to the UN...

I suppose this book was meant to be cute--with the endearing younger sister who's trying to be likeable but can't quite get there and the older sister who you're sure behind all her jerkiness really loves Sam and then David (the President's son) who's brought in to rival Jack. But none of the characters ever captured me. It was like they all had too much of something (even her best friend had a lot piled on).

Or maybe that had nothing to do with it. Maybe it was that I never did find out why Lucy and jack were dating (it didn't make sense to me) and Sam's whole rebel-artist thing seemed to exist because she said it every five pages and wore only black than because of anything she did.

This story was alright, but I just didn't find myself caring one way or the other about the characters (or if I did it was because Sam was annoying me telling me how she was a 'rebel').

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